what once was lost
by Delenn
Summary: She thought he'd forgotten her - like a book on a shelf, she said. So the Doctor does everything in his power to prove that he will never forget.


**Disclaimer: Recognizable characters are not my own - I just borrow them.  
**

 **Pairing: River/Twelve**

 **Summary: She thought he'd forgotten her - like a book on a shelf, she said. So the Doctor does everything in his power to prove that he will never forget.**

 **Rated: T**

 **Written: 9/18/14-9/2/15 (shhh pretend I didn't get stuck forever on this)**

 **Title basically stolen from Amazing Grace with no shame.**

 **Thanks to Beverly for inspiration and looking over an earlier version. Still not sure what I think about this one, but instead of fighting with it for another year HAPPY RIVER DAY (spoilers, sweeties) and I shall release the fic into the wild!**

 _"I died saving him. In return he saved me to a database in the biggest library in the universe. Left me like a book on a shelf. Didn't even say goodbye. He doesn't like endings."_ \- River Song: The Name of the Doctor

* * *

 _what once was lost_

She thought he'd forgotten her - like a book on a shelf, she said. So the Doctor does everything in his power to prove that he will never forget.

He brings half the TARDIS library into the console room - books on shelves everywhere he turns. A TARDIS key tucked safely between the pages of _The Time Traveler's Wife_.

His coat is lined with a flash of red to match her lipstick and heels - with him always. He wears a wedding ring for the first time in his long lives - no spoilers now - even though it's all humany-wumany.

He grows up for her. It's time to stop being afraid of himself: he knows what he is and isn't capable of now.

He isn't capable of living without her.

He wakes up dreaming about her - how to save her. Spends all his free time (ridiculous saying: as if time were free and could be caught - chained - slaved to his will) jotting down notes and equations, determined that this time he will not rest until he frees her from the Library.

No prison in existence can ever hold River Song, not even one made up to save her from death itself. A mistake that, too long uncorrected.

He will fix his mistakes. No more running and regretting and forgetting.

As if he could ever forget for one moment the curve of her lip or the sparkle to her eyes or the magical bounce of her hair.

(He's not prone to hyperbole this go around, but he maintains that her hair is magic. One of a kind. Perfect.

And distracting.)

As if he could forget holding his wife in his arms, so vibrant and alive that her touch burns him where their skin meets, leaving him shivering in her wake.

His very cells vibrate and hum with remembrance, his whole body aching with weary longing for her and his mind full of her.

A mind where he keeps whole sections walled off, the raw facts stored elsewhere - separate and far away from the memories - for easy access.

Every time he regenerates, all the careful pathways fade and flare and realign, and he's left a completely new mind.

The blocks remain, strengthened over time as he builds better cages - tricks and traps and lures - so that his own mind never goes near.

He has been so many men, lived so many lives. He's forgotten more than he remembers. Most of it on purpose.

(He tells himself no more forgetting even though he knows this regeneration has forgotten more than most.)

But River: her mind has blazed across his, touching everything. There is no connection he can make without it including her.

There's no Doctor without River.

He's not complete without River running at his side, hand in his.

He wants to find Gallifrey with her. He wants to stand under the red suns and see the light reflecting off her hair.

The Doctor wants his wife back.

And he isn't the kind of man to sit idly by, twiddling his thumbs.

The Doctor locks himself in his TARDIS (the one place other than his own mind that is so full of River it could burst). Here, he is surrounded by her. He sits on a chair, surrounded by books full of them - of River - and plots.

(River would accuse him of brooding, hiding away with books that remind him of her and imaginary equations to save her.

She'd probably be right, not that he'd ever admit it where she might hear.)

They've always been a bit fairytale, and that's all well and good if there's a happily ever after at the end. If there's not, well then, he'll just make one.

The Doctor scratches equations in the margins of the book he's pouring through, since he's run out of space on the chalkboards again. He scours myths for hints of River - for any hints at all - because somehow River always knows.

There aren't any, not for this. No shortcuts or tricks or magic.

He throws his head back and squeezes his eyes shut against a time-ache, just behind his temples. More paradoxes looming with each half-formed plan.

He feels desperate, alone in his ship and thinking only of River, trying to save her.

Only usually, River saves herself before he manages it.

In his defense, he was a bit busy dying the last time. And he would have done, if River and the TARDIS hadn't conspired to save him.

"I might need your help, Old Girl. I just need something - anything," he admits tetchily, this body still unused to asking for help, but willing to ask just about anything if it will give him back River. Willing to beg the universe itself to give him back his wife.

"Voice Interface Enabled," purrs a voice that sends him jerking upright, eyes wide as he turns to the console.

She's there, dressed in his favorite dress, backlit in gold and smirking.

The binding in his hand cracks under his grip. "River?"

The smirk widens. "I am not River Song. I am Voice Interface."

"Nonsense," the Doctor growls, shaken, his mind racing through corridors and vaults, trying to keep up. "I never reset the Voice Interface from wee Amelia." He would stand if he thought his legs would hold him. "What is this - why are you here?"

"Spoilers." And she flickers out of existence as quickly as she'd appeared, smirk lingering in his mind's eye.

It's not _fish fingers and custard_. It's better. The TARDIS and River were connected - mother and child...

 _I seem to be able to fly her. She showed me how. She taught me._

No. Not _were_ connected. _Are_ connected.

(He'd thought that the connection in Trenzalore had been severed - he'd been so certain when River had stopped haunting him, no matter how he'd begged.

Only maybe she'd never stopped at all. Maybe she'd just gotten lost. And lost things could be recovered.)

The Doctor snaps the fairytale shut and marches purposefully to the console.

It's time to go get his wife.


End file.
